


Enough

by ninamazing



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-25
Updated: 2006-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:08:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninamazing/pseuds/ninamazing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Mal doesn't want to cry in front of Zoe, but then he does want to, so he tries, but the tears are dry before they reach his face and he is so numb that he scrapes his face against the jagged edge of the rock to see what is wrong. When there's blood running into his eyes the dream goes black for a moment and River reaches out to grab something before it returns.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://mal-river.livejournal.com/32989.html), to the mal-river community at LiveJournal.

River is dreaming again. Tears slide down her face silently at first, her expression not changing as the breath slips softly from her lips and she almost snores. There's hair in her face, but she can't feel it. All she sees is the battlefield.

The fighting is over but there they all lay, some beaten and tired, most bloody, in so much pain their vision is obscured and their consciousness is hazy at best. They don't remember what life is like anymore; they don't remember that there even is life. Once you've been in Serenity you never leave. You just learn to live there.

Mal's friends – and admirers – Terrence and Alban are lying on either side of them and he cries into Terrence's shoulder, since no one else is around, since Zoe has passed out with her eyes still open, staring into space though she can't see anything. Terrence's legs are gone; Alban's face is pounded so far into the dirt that it is unrecognizable. Mal wishes he could be numb, wishes he could forget to laugh or sob, but he is both laughing and sobbing in utter hysterics, screaming for his mother although in three days he will get the broadwave from the news that tells him she is dead, worse than dust: nothing.

Someone slaps Zoe's face, drags Mal to his feet, slaps him too, and Mal wants to fight back but the hand on his cheek has given him something to feel and so he says nothing. He lets his honor, lets his dignity slide along with everything else. He wishes they would shoot him in the back of his head, but instead they slap him again and laugh, smack Zoe again and laugh, and then they start to unzip her jacket and he is on them all at once, killing them and biting them as if he enjoys it, and when the others find them they chain both Zoe and Mal to a rock and let them sit there. Zoe has woken up and they are afraid to touch her now.

Mal doesn't want to cry in front of Zoe, but then he does want to, so he tries, but the tears are dry before they reach his face and he is so numb that he scrapes his face against the jagged edge of the rock to see what is wrong. When there's blood running into his eyes the dream goes black for a moment and River reaches out to grab something before it returns.

 

Mal is unused to sleeping with another, but he figures it will stop his dreaming, by necessity.

It doesn't work.

Instead River is there, sliced all the way open by a double-knife grenade that responds to pressure. Her guts are out, everything is out; Mal's girl is torn apart and on display so that everyone can see her secrets, everyone can know how badly he failed her. The worst part is that Mal is paralyzed. It is a dim awareness in the back of his mind, River's death, but in his dream-state he can do nothing, cannot go to her, cannot bury her, cannot close her eyes and kiss her and cover her back up. Instead everything happens just like it happened in reality, and he is grabbed and slapped and the anger rises up and clenches his heart so hard that it bursts and all the blood runs out and fills his body with its potency and power. He swears he will never be like this again. There is nothing left to lose.

He lies there on the rock with Zoe, but when he starts to bleed from his face she reaches out an arm to shove him away from the sharp parts and he bursts awake.

The first thing he sees is the ceiling of Serenity and he thinks, as in every other night, that he could kiss and hug her grime and engine sweat. It's his quarters, and if it's not Heaven at least it's not Hell, and though he's stuck in purgatory lately he's been starting to think that there's a way out, up through the ceiling perhaps.

The girl who's responsible for his optimism, he realizes, has a wet face and an open mouth and she's both drooling and crying and she grabs for him, and then she starts to scream.

 

"River. River. You're dreaming. Wake up."

She does, and when she sees him she finds out also that it isn't in his mind anymore; only she is, and the way he sees her makes her warm and whole and she remembers who she is and what she's doing here. He tells her with his eyes to kiss him and so she does, all over, keeping him together with her passion, reminding herself that he is alive and he's very good at keeping it that way. She's both happy and sad, at once, that she doesn't see the future.

Mal kisses her back, like he always does, and she knows that she is the only thing in his body and his soul but she thinks it isn't fair, so she shows him, pushes herself ever closer, making it true for him too. He needs to feel her heart against his and her legs around him, so she gives that to him, and he needs her to claw off his shirt so she starts to do that too, but he stops her hands with his own and holds her too close for her to keep going. He looks into her eyes and she thinks that maybe he can read as well as she can what is inside them.

" _Tian shi,_ darlin', nobody ever said you have to sleep with me and Lord knows you got a boatload o' reasons not to," he tells her gently.

River blinks, and the tears form again, and Mal wonders why her face is shaped that way, as if on purpose, to give the maximum amount of tug at his heart and all its strings. River wonders why anyone loves her this much.

"I want to," she answers. "I want to help you."

His right hand, which had been smoothing the back of her ear, stops, and his left hand, at the small of her back, clenches her even more tightly.

"Ain't nothin' that can be helped, darlin', and ain't nothing I want a woman's pity for. I've been down that road."

River looks angry now, because she is, but she also knows that Mal can't keep the adoration for that anger out of his face, loves that she still challenges him even when he knows he makes her almost melt into everything.

"It's not pity," she explains, as if to a toothless infant gnawing on an apple.

She doesn't say anything else, so Mal smiles at her, making River wish he had let her take a crack at his shirt buttons.

"What is it, then, little albatross?"

"You can be better," she says. "Hold together like Kaylee's broken bowl, like Wash fixed Zoe. I can take the memories away. I can keep them for you."

She looks so earnest and sweet that Mal kisses her mouth, and tries not to think about the war so she won't be able to hear or see anything of his, and his tongue sweeps over her insides; he gives her lips insistent nibbles until she moans and he has to stop for fear of what he might do before she is ready.

"I'll be better, darlin,'" he confides, rocking her slowly, taking their pain away in little bits. "You make me that way. Ain't nobody gonna make you carry memories that ain't yours. You've done that too much already. I'm not the only one's got night fears."

"But I love you," she says: her eyes are glistening with the pools of salt water in them and Mal's so crazy for her he wants to touch her all at once. He settles for stroking her cheek with his finger, kissing it softly.

"I love you, too," he replies, belief filling them both, "and that's enough."


End file.
